Miss Pye, who was a maiden aunt herself, gave Hester a hard stare. “I think you should leave the professor in peace. He requires silence and round-the-clock care. Shoo, now, all of you…”
Hester, Tom and Smew retreated into the corridor, and Windolene Pye closed the door firmly behind them. Tom said, “I expect he was just overcome. He spent years trying to get somebody to fund a second expedition to America, and to find out so suddenly that the margravine’s taking her whole city there…”
Hester laughed. “It’s impossible! She’s mad!”
“Miss Shaw!” gasped Smew. “How can you say such things? The margravine is our ruler, and the Ice Gods’ representative on earth. It was her ancestor, Dolly Rasmussen, who led the survivors of the first Anchorage out of America to safety. It’s only natural that it should fall to a Rasmussen to lead us home again.”
“I don’t know why you’re defending her,” Hester grumbled. “She treats you like something she found clinging to the sole of her shoe. And I hope you know you aren’t fooling anybody with all these costume changes. We can tell there’s only one of you.”
“I am not trying to fool anybody,” Smew replied, with immense dignity. “The margravine must be attended by certain servants and officials: chauffeurs, chefs, chamberlains, footmen, et cetera. Unfortunately, they are all dead. So I have had to step into the breach. I do my bit to keep the old traditions going.”
“And what were you before? A chauffeur or a chamberlain?”
“I was the margravine’s dwarf.”
“What did she need a dwarf for?”
“The margravine’s household has always had a dwarf. To amuse the margravine.”
“How?”
Smew shrugged. “By being short, I suppose.”
“Is that amusing?”
“It’s tradition, Miss Shaw. We have been glad of our traditions in Anchorage, since the plague came. Here are your rooms.”
He flung open the doors of two rooms a little further along the corridor from Pennyroyal’s. Each had long windows, a big bed, fat heating ducts. Each was about the size of the Jenny Haniver ’s entire gondola.
“They look lovely,” said Tom gratefully. “But we just need the one.”
“Out of the question,” said Smew, bustling into the first room to adjust the controls on the ducts. “It would be unheard of for unmarried young persons of the opposite gender to share a room in the Winter Palace. All manner of canoodling might occur. Quite out of the question.” A rattling inside one of the ducts distracted him for an instant, then he turned to Hester and Tom with a sly wink. “However, there’s a connecting door between these rooms, and if someone wished to slip through, why, nobody would ever know…”
But somebody knew almost everything that happened in Anchorage. Peering at their screens in the blue dark, the watchers saw a grainy, fish-eye view of Tom and Hester following the dwarf into the second room.
“She’s so ugly!”
“She doesn’t look too happy.”
“Who would, with a face like that?”
“No, it’s not that. She’s jealous. Didn’t you see the way Freya looked at her boyfriend?”
“I’m bored with this lot. Let’s hop.”
The picture changed, jumping to other views: the Aakiuqs in their living room, Scabious in his lonely house, the steady, patient work of the engine district and the agricultural quarter…
“Shouldn’t we send word to the Aakiuqs?” asked Tom, as Smew made his adjustments to the ducts in the second room and prepared to leave. “They might be expecting us back.”
“It’s already been done, sir,” said Smew. “You are guests of the House of Rasmussen now.”
“Mr Scabious won’t be too happy about that,” said Hester. “He didn’t seem to like us one bit.”
“Mr Scabious is a pessimistic man,” said Smew. “It is not his fault. He is a widower, and his only son Axel died in the plague. He has not borne the loss well. But he has no power to stop the margravine offering you her hospitality. You are both very welcome here in the Winter Palace. Just ring for a servant — oh, all right, me — if you need anything. Dinner will be at seven, but if you would please come down a little earlier, the margravine wishes to show you her Wunderkammer.”
Her what? thought Hester, but she was sick of looking stupid and ignorant in front of Tom, so she kept quiet. When Smew had gone they opened the connecting door and sat on Tom’s bed, bouncing up and down to test the springs.
“America!” said Tom. “Just think of it! She’s very brave, this Freya Rasmussen. Hardly any cities venture west of Greenland, and none have ever tried to reach the Dead Continent.”
“No, because it’s dead, ” said Hester sourly. “I don’t think I’d risk a whole city on one of Pennyroyal’s books.”
“Professor Pennyroyal knows what he’s talking about,” said Tom loyally. “Anyway, he’s not the only one to report green places in America.”
“All those old airman’s legends, you mean?”
“Well, yes. And Snori Ulvaeusson’s map.”
“The one you told me about? The one that conveniently vanished before anybody could check it out?”
“Are you saying the professor’s lying?” asked Tom.
Hester shook her head. She wasn’t sure what she was saying; only that she found it hard to accept Pennyroyal’s tale of virgin forests and noble savages. But who was she to doubt him? Pennyroyal was a famous explorer who’d written books, and Hester had never even read a book. Tom and Freya believed in him, and they knew much more about these things than her. It was just that she couldn’t equate the timid little man who had quivered and whined each time a rocket came near the Jenny Haniver with the brave explorer who fought off bears and befriended savage Americans.
“I’ll go and see Aakiuq tomorrow,” she said. “See if he can speed up work on the Jenny. ”
Tom nodded, but he wouldn’t look at her. “I like it here,” he said. “This city, I mean. It’s sad, but it’s lovely. It reminds me of the nicer bits of London. And it doesn’t go about eating other towns, like London did.”
Hester imagined a gap opening between the two of them, like a crack in ice, very thin at the moment, but likely to widen. She said, “It’s just another Traction City, Tom. Traders or Predators, they’re all the same. Very nice up top, but down below it’ll be slaves and dirt and suffering and corruption. The sooner we leave, the better for both of us.”
Smew returned for them at six, and led them down by long, spiralling staircases to a receiving room where Freya Rasmussen was waiting.
The margravine seemed to have made an attempt to do something interesting with her hair, but given up halfway through. She blinked at her guests through her overgrown fringe and said, “I’m afraid Professor Pennyroyal is still indisposed, but I’m sure he’ll be all right. The Gods of the Ice would hardly have sent him here if they were just going to let him die, would they? It wouldn’t be fair. But you’ll be interested in my Wunderkammer, Tom, a London Historian like you.”
“All right, what’s a Wunderkammer?” asked Hester, tired of being ignored by this spoilt teenager.
“It’s my private museum,” said Freya. “My Cabinet of Wonders.” She sneezed, and waited a moment for a handmaiden to come and wipe her nose, then remembered they were all dead and wiped it on her cuff. “I love history, Tom. All those old things people dig up. Just ordinary things that were once used by ordinary people, but made special by time.” Tom nodded eagerly, and she laughed, sensing that she’d met a kindred spirit. “When I was little, I didn’t want to be margravine at all. I wanted to be a historian like you and Professor Pennyroyal. So I started my own museum. Come and see.”
Smew led the way, and the margravine kept up her flow of bright chatter as they passed through more corridors, across a vast ballroom where chandeliers lay mothballed under dust-sheets, out into a glass-walled cloister. Lights shone in the dark outside, illuminating whirling snow, an iced-up fountain. Hester stuck her hands into her pockets and made them into fists, stalking along behind Tom. So she’s not just pretty, she thought, she’s read all the same books as he has, and she knows all about history, and she still expects the gods to play fair. She’s like Tom’s mirror image. How am I supposed to compete with that?
The journey ended in a circular lobby, at a door guarded by two Stalkers. As he recognized their angular shapes Tom flinched backwards and almost cried out in terror, for one of those ancient, armoured fighting machines had once chased him and Hester halfway across the Hunting Ground. Then Smew lit an argon globe and he saw that
